So, what will it be? The Government has perhaps five options:
Option 1: Carry on with GBR, exactly as proposed. Everything you’ve seen so far, except from GBRTT itself, suggests this is becoming less likely.
Option 2: Change the name, give it a different shape, but keep the underlying concept. This organisation lets the train operating contracts and manages infrastructure. Seems pretty likely.
Option 3: Go back to split track and train management, with separate profit and loss accounts. This is an unlikely outcome.
Option 4: Nationalise everything, as the unions demand. Shunt GBR into the Department for Transport. Hard to imagine, even under a Labour government, given the cost to the taxpayer.
Option 5: Privatise it all. Get it off the balance sheet - a bit like the National Grid, under very strong regulation that creates incentives to invest. This will have some supporters, but it would split opinion on party political lines, making it undeliverable.
“The fundamental choice here is how the Government sees the role of the private sector,” says Robertson.
“Does everybody think the private sector will continue to provide infrastructure services on a contracted basis? Not even Labour disagrees with that. So, the private sector’s place in infrastructure is secure.
“Why, then, are we asking so many questions about the role of the private sector among operators, when other private sector operations patently work fantastically well? See airlines or logistics.
“It’s the short-termism of the train operators that has been disappointing, and that’s what has to be changed. We created monsters through inappropriate structures and regulation.”
Atkins’ Cara Muprhy observes: “You don’t need legislation to change the culture of not taking responsibility. We need to be more open and communicative. It really isn’t that hard to have the right conversations. Don’t fumble through.
“GBRTT seems to be a collection of very intelligent people with a lot of experience. But, as a consequence, are they bold enough or transformative enough? It seems like they are afraid to fix properly what is broken.
“The railway has to be more cohesive, more collaborative, more to the benefit of society as a whole. It’s the most important element in all this, and it is in danger of not happening.
“I understand that we need revenue now, and that significant reform takes a few years to settle for the revenue benefits to filter through. But you need to spend money to make money: I don’t think this will be as transformative or as exciting as everyone would like or expect it to be.”
Alistair Lees concludes: “This is the opportunity to create a much more sellable product. GBR is not being a driver of revenue. This is a cultural shift that it will find hard because it is still chomping at the bit to control things, and that is wasting time.
“GBR needs to enable others to generate revenue, and it needs to undertake cost control. It needs to be a persuader.
“There are straightforward things it can do, such as a much stronger family or group fare offer. There are somewhere between 40 and 100 different products around the country. That is ludicrous. How can you market that? I have no idea. How can you explain to people why they are eligible for one, but not for another? I have no idea. It’s really stupid. It is ripe for rationalising.
“We have railcards to stimulate demand. But there are 15 national ones and about 50 regional ones. They are all serving little groups of people. Simplify it. Even if it becomes a little more expensive, it will be more useful.
“The one bit of ticketing news that we have seen in 2022 is a punishment. You will be punished to the tune of £100 if you get a choice wrong. That is the only national-scale ticketing promotion you have heard, since Flexi-Seasons were offered a year and a half ago.
“This is just terrible. In any other business, if the only customer initiative you could come up with was a penalty for a mistake, you would definitely be sacked.
“There is a lot of desire within GBR to do fares and ticketing reform, to be fair. But they are finding it heavy going. They need to park the ideas that try to change the world, and get on with collaborative projects that are actually achievable.
“There are some great people at GBR. But the organisation as a whole has no credibility. That’s because it has talked down to people, instead of talking with them, for a year and a half now. And it has nothing to show for that - the credibility gap is widening.
“UK rail is mostly vested interests fighting for their own corner and stabbing each other in the back. This is Government’s problem to solve. There is no vision in Government for how rail should really be.
“I’ll suggest to you what the vision should be: where rail is an option, people choose to use it. We are very far from that goal, and it is getting further away instead of getting closer.”
In that summary lies GBR’s future. Through a summer of strikes, through rising inflation and a cost-of-living crisis, through changing patterns of work, the people who were accustomed to travelling by rail are now getting used to not travelling by rail.
Their trust and loyalty are easily lost… and hard to win back.
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